What we pack with
Five materials cover everything the unit sends. Each is used for the job it is good at, and the category the line belongs to decides which of them the bench reaches for.
Double-wall carton
The default box for dry household goods. Four sizes stand under the bench, and the class the figures return is the size that gets pulled.
Polythene sack
Sealed round textiles and soft lines, then put inside the carton, so a wet pallet at a depot cannot reach them.
Inner bag
Anything with a screw cap or a pump is bagged before it is boxed, so a cap that works loose in transit stays inside its own bag.
Void fill
Loose fill packed round a fragile line until the contents stop moving when the box is shaken.
Tape and label
One tape run along the centre seam and one across each end, then the label goes on the largest flat face, clear of every seam.
Packing goes by category
Dry household goods travel in a plain double-wall carton and need nothing else. They are stacked heaviest first, flat faces down, and the lighter lines go on top where nothing can crush them.
Textiles and soft lines go into a sealed polythene sack inside that carton. The sack is the waterproof layer, the carton is the crush layer, and neither does the other's job.
Anything with a screw cap or a pump is bagged before it is boxed. Cleaning liquids, garden sprays and kitchen dispensers all take the same treatment, whatever the maker says about the seal.
Glassware, ceramics and anything with a lid that lifts are treated as fragile from the moment the picker marks the tote. The bench packs those last, alone, with the rest of the order boxed and standing clear.
Small electricals travel in their own retail packaging inside the carton, upright and boxed so the retail box is never the outer box. The pack you unwrap is the pack the maker sent, not a pack that has carried a label across the country.
An order that mixes categories takes the strictest of them. A dry line travelling with a glass line is packed as though the whole box were glass.
The rule for anything fragile
The rule is short, and it is the same at every bench. Void fill goes in until the contents stop moving when the box is shaken, and the box steps up one size to make room for that fill. A glass line never travels touching a wall of the carton.
Stepping up a size is what makes the rule work. Fill packed into a box that is already full simply wedges the item against the wall, which is the thing the fill is there to prevent. The bigger box is the point, and the fill is what holds the item in the middle of it.
The packer shakes the sealed box before it goes to the stage area. Anything that shifts sends the box back to the bench for more fill, and the shake is repeated until the box is silent.
Because the fragile route changes the box, it changes the class as well. A parcel that was going to be class B leaves as class C the moment the step-up applies, and the label prints the class it actually left as.
Void fill goes in until the contents stop moving when the box is shaken.
What travels inside the box
The packing note travels inside the box, sitting on top, with your order reference on its first line. It lists the lines in that box and nothing else, so the first thing you read on opening is what you should be holding.
Where an order needs two boxes, each box carries its own note and each note says which box of the pair it belongs to. The lines are split across the notes exactly as they are split across the boxes.
The box carries the goods and that note, and that is the whole of what goes in it. What you ordered is what you unpack, and the bench keeps it that way on purpose.
The box class our bench would pull is worked out from the same two figures the listing already holds. The box-class chooser on the issue page runs that arithmetic for any parcel you care to type in, and prints the sentence that decided it.
The packing bench · stage three of five
Asking about packaging
Write to fulfilment@clickmartltd.store with the word packed on the first line and the message reaches this bench. Tell us before you order if a line has to travel a particular way up, and the bench will note it on the pick sheet.
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